You are here

Our Customer Innovations

New Zealand’s energy sector is a fast changing landscape and Genesis Energy is transforming itself to move ahead of the pack. By becoming an early adopter of energy technology products and smarter services for customers we are creating a robust and exciting innovation programme for the future.

To support this transformation; systems, processes, capabilities and structures have all been upgraded. We are gaining insights into customer behaviour and using key findings to aid the development of new products and services. Our fresh focus on addressing customer needs will generate greater customer loyalty, advocacy and satisfaction.

To assist Genesis Energy in delivering the best consumer goods to customers, commercial alliances with proven technology providers will continue to be widened and developed.

Advanced Meters

The Advanced Meter rollout provides the foundation for building a customer focused innovation strategy. To support the Advanced Meter installation Genesis Energy has invested in a wide-ranging upgrade of its customer information systems; this has resulted in a more flexible and stable structure to handle the large amounts of data provided by the Advanced Meters.

At the end of June 2012 there were more than 268,000 Genesis Energy electricity customer households and businesses with Advanced Meters installed.

Through Advanced Meters, customers now have access to detailed power consumption information. Energy usage can be received electronically and displayed in graphic form. Usage statistics can be shown for the current billing month or broken down to an individual hour. When combined with the financial incentives of a multi rate tariff, this information grants the customer a genuine opportunity to save money by managing power consumption.

Advanced Meters and the data they supply is a crucial component in delivering further customer focused innovations. These may include identifying, and then notifying customers if their appliances are functioning incorrectly, or the ability to offer customers special deals on energy efficient products and credits on power bills.

We believe that effective use of Advanced Meter technology will place us in an advantaged position to offer existing customers exciting new products and potential customers a value-added alternative.

My Meter Smartphone Application

Launched in April 2012, the My Meter mobile application gives Genesis Energy customers a heads up on how their monthly power bill is tracking anywhere and anytime. My Meter is available for free download to Apple IPhones, IPads and Android powered mobile devices.

The My Meter app was designed and developed in-house at Genesis Energy and relays the data received from customer’s Advanced Meters. Account holders receive an overview of power consumption, in kilowatt hours at their residential or business address. The application can then expand available data into a graphic display with monthly, daily and hourly configurations for any set period. With this information as reference customers can then modify their usage behavior to conserve power and also gauge the effectiveness of any energy-saving measures.

Early interest in this useful application has been very strong. Since its release on 27 April 2012 till 30 June the My Meter application was accessed 9,487 times by customers using mobile devices. Phase 2 of My Meter is currently in development.

Tomorrow Street

Genesis Energy has researched and identified emerging worldwide technologies that are set to change the face of energy management at the home and business level. To test these innovations in local conditions we created an advanced energy neighbourhood in Auckland’s North Shore called Tomorrow Street.

The 15 households that make up Tomorrow Street represent a mix of New Zealanders – there are families with children, single occupiers and a few empty nesters. The houses are typical older bungalows and villas, some renovated, some not and with various levels of heat insulation.

Each household is trialing a specially designed Home Energy Management System that helps occupants understand how energy is being used around their homes. The system also lets householders monitor and control the energy usage of individual devices and appliances room-by-room. Tomorrow Street residents can use smartphones and iPads to switch appliances on and off remotely, or to programme them to operate at certain times.

Tomorrow Street is a live testing ground for some of the innovations that will become the future of energy in New Zealand. It’s also a way of involving customers in the business and giving them an opportunity to provide feedback on what works, how things could be made simpler and if these innovations help them save energy and money.

homeiQ

Genesis Energy and Greenwave Reality began a strategic partnership in May 2012, Greenwave Reality is a global innovator in the ‘smart’ home services market and will work with us in developing home energy management products for customers using the name homeiQ.

The joint development effort will initially focus on home energy management but will expand to include connected lighting, home monitoring and potentially other exciting future services based on the highly secure and scalable Greenwave Reality Monitoring and Control Platform.

By using homeiQ products, customers gain a better understanding of their home energy consumption and how to become more energy efficient through a number of features including intuitive energy visualisations and comparisons, interactive coaching, budgeting, smart controls and alerts.

homeiQ is being rolled out to the 15 Tomorrow Street households first, then to a test group of customers before being made available to all customers.

Multi Rate Pricing Tariff

From 1 January 2012, Genesis Energy has been running trials of an Advanced Meter pricing tariff with a test group of 225 customers in the United Waitemata network. The multi rate tariff gives customers direct financial benefits for changing the timing of their energy consumption.

The higher tariff in the peak period and lower tariff in the off peak period act as an inventive for customers to shift from peak time (4pm – 9pm on weekdays) to off peak time (11pm – 7am weekdays and 10pm – 7am weekends) or the shoulder period (all times not covered by peak or off peak).

In addition to the multi rate pricing tariff we will also look to develop a range of advanced metering products that give customers who have concerns about their ability to pay, more proactive account balance information. Advice will be provided on what actions they might need to take to stay in control of their energy consumption and costs.

The Company’s commitment to its Advanced Meter rollout programme will make these benefits available to more and more customers over the next few years. Our target is to install Advanced Meters in virtually all of its electricity connections.